Vaccination Works!

Written By: Jason Shafrin
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May•
30•09

Many parents believe that vaccination provides little benefit for their own children, and instead only reduces the probability other kids get sick. A Kaiser Permanente study refutes this belief for the whooping cough:

Compared to children who are immunized against whooping cough, those who aren’t vaccinated are 23 times more likely to get the infection — a finding that shows the danger faced by children whose parents refuse to have their children vaccinated.

“This study helps dispel one of the commonly held beliefs among vaccine-refusing parents: that their children are not at risk for vaccine preventable diseases,” lead author Jason Glanz, a senior scientist at Kaiser Permanente’s Institute for Health Research, said in a Kaiser news release.

“It also shows that the decision to refuse immunizations could have important ramifications for the health of the entire community. Based on our analysis, we found that one in 10 additional whooping cough infections could have been prevented by immunization,” Glanz said.